wife

   While wives in earlier times appear to have regularly addressed their partners as ‘husband’, husbands do not seem to have returned the compliment and used ‘wife’ as a normal term of address.

   There is a useful passage in The Taming of the Shrew where Christopher Sly, a tinker who has been told that he is a lord, asks what he should call his supposed wife (actually a pageboy in disguise). He is told that he must call her ‘madam’. ‘Alice madam, or Joan madam?’ asks Sly. It is a pleasant joke, but seems to indicate that while first names were used at the lower end of the social scale, and respectful titles at the upper end, ‘wife’ was not normal anywhere. On those occasions when it does occur in literature it has rather a cold ring to it, much as if it were ‘woman’ rather than ‘wife’ that was being said.

   As it happens, the earliest meaning of ‘wife’ was ‘woman’ in a general sense, a meaning retained in compounds such as ‘ale-wife’, ‘fishwife’.

   In modern times ‘wife’ would probably be used jokingly, either in mock severity or as a general pleasantry. ‘“Hi, wife,” he said cheerfully,’ occurs in Judith Rossner’s Looking for Mr Goodbar.

   The term can also be softened down by the addition of a diminutive ending. Recorded diminutives include: wifekin, wifelet, wifeling, wifelkin, and wifie. Mrs Henry Ward, for instance, writes in Robert Elsmere: ‘I know you have troubles of your own, wifie.’

   Petruchio, in The Taming of the Shrew (2:i) calls Kate ‘wife’ once he has agreed with her father that he will marry her. There is a similar anticipatory use of the term in Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë. Jane says: ‘Sir, I will marry you.’ ‘Edward - my little wife!’ says Mr Rochester, asking her to use his first name instead of ‘Sir’.